How to use Shared Drives

One of my favourites features of a Google Workspace account is Shared Drives. In this post, we’re going to look at what they are, how to use them and how they differ from My Drive.

What is a Shared drive?

A Shared Drive lives in your Google Drive and is an addition to your normal My Drive folder. The main idea is that it’s a space where everyone can see all the same files (although may have different editing rights) and that the files are not owned by individuals but by the organisation, which is especially handy if someone leaves.

Comparison of Shared Drives with My Drive

Below is a comparison of Shared Drives with My Drive highlighting the key differences.

	Shared Drive	My Drive
Who owns files & folders	The organisation	The individual who created them
Moving files & folders to My Drive	User can only move files. Admins can move files & folders.	Users can move files & folders
Moving files & folders within a Shared Drive	Only with Manager or Content Manager access. Only Managers can move files and folders between Shared Drives.	Users can move files & folders
File sharing	All Shared Drive members see all the files and folders.	Users will see only what has been shared with them.
Deleted files	Each Shared Drive has its own trash.	All deleted files or folders are in the same trash.
Restoring files	Only with Contributor, Manager, or Content Manager access.	Only the creator can.
Folder appearance	Can add images	Can be coloured

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Where are Shared Drives?

These live just under My Drive. Note, you will need a Google Workspace account (see here for a current list) to see this unless someone has already shared one with you, as you can be part of a Shared Drive, even with a free Gmail account.

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Setting up a Shared Drive

You will need a Google Workspace account to be able to create a Shared Drive.

Right-click on the Shared drive menu and choose “New shared drive…”.

Then give it a name.

Now you have a brand-new Shared Drive.

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Managing members of a Shared Drive

Next, you will want to invite people to your Shared Drive. Click on “Manage members”. Alternatively, click on the Shared Drive name and select “Manage members” from the menu.

Here you invite the people you want to have access to all the content on the Drive. Just start typing their name or email address and they’ll appear ready for you to select them.

As we will see later, there might be cases where there are some people who you only want to give access to certain files or folders. If that’s the case, they shouldn’t be added here.

When you start adding someone, the screen will change and you will have the option of sending them a message telling them they have been added to the Shared Drive.

One of the most important things to do when adding people is to set their access rights. Shared Drives has more options compared to sharing on My Drive, where you can only make someone a viewer, commenter, or editor.

Here you have five different options:

• Viewer: Can view files and folders
• Commenter: Can leave comments on files.
• Contributor: Can add and edit files.
• Content manager: Can add, edit, move, and delete files.
• Manager: Can do the same as a Content Manager, plus manage people and the Shared Drive settings.

As the creator of a Shared drive you will be a Manager by default. The default for people you’ve added is Content Manager.

Clicking on the cog on the ‘Manage members’ screen allows you to change some of the Shared Drive settings. I think the descriptions explain what these are, but be aware that these are “on” by default, and you may wish to restrict access.

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Further Shared Drive options

Let’s now look at what other options there are within Shared Drives. Click on the Shared drive name and you will see a menu with various options.

Emailing members

One nice feature is that you can email the Shared drive members directly from here. You have the option to send the email depending on their access.

Shared drive settings

We saw these in the Manage Members section, and this just allows you to go straight there.

Change theme

In My Drive you can colour your folders, although the recipient doesn’t see that colour. Shared Drives have an image, which can be one of a default gallery, or you can upload your own one. The image size of a Shared Drive theme should be at least 1280 x 144 pixels and maintain that aspect ratio. It’s especially nice if you have your Drive in Grid view rather than List view, so the images are bigger.

Here’s a Google Slides template to help you make your own Shared Drive images.

Search within Shared Drive

Similar to My Drive, you can choose to only search within the Shared Drive.

Hide Shared Drive

You can hide Shared Drives. Maybe you are sharing your screen and you don’t want certain people seeing the name of a drive, or maybe you just aren’t working on that project now. To view the hidden Shared Drives, click on “Hidden shared drives”.

View trash

This is where you can view the trash of that specific Shared Drive and restore files to it. Note, deleted files go in this trash and not in your general trash.

Delete Shared Drive

It’s possible to delete a Shared Drive if you have Manager access. Note, the Drive muse be empty to do so.

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Sharing only specific files and folders

As I mentioned above, there may be cases where you don’t want to share everything with everyone in that Shared Drive. You can still share specific files and folders with people without giving them access to everything. Just right-click on the file or folder you want to share, as you would in My Drive, and share it with that person. The access rights are the same as My Drive, i.e. Viewer, Commenter, or Editor.

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Personally, I love using Shared Drives and I find sharing files and folders much easier than the mess that sometimes can happen when people share specific files or folders from their My Drive.

Find out how to move folders from My Drive, either with a Workspace account or a personal Gmail account in this post here.

In my previous post, I look at the key differences between Google Workspace and a free Gmail accounts and Shared drives is just one of them.

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